The Embalmer by Anne-Renée Caillé has been translated from its original French. Given the layout, I'm guessing the little vignettes are poem stories, though in English they are more prose. It is the musings of a daughter regarding her father's job as an embalmer, how he joined those mysterious ranks, and unusual cases he shared.

It's interesting to read these one-shot cases- peaceful death at home, death by grenade, asphyxiation by fridge. Homicide, suicide, natural death. None of it matters to the embalmer. A good embalmer is an artist, making the dead look alive. I had a vague notion of what the job entailed, but no ida the lengths they may go with reconstruction, or how reconstruction worked. To me, the wildest case mentioned was the suicide victim who set her house on fire, then locked herself in a basement fridge and shot herself. The snapshot about organ donation and how harvested eyes are handled was somewhat squeamish for me. I am missing an eye, and since its loss, I'm hella sensitive over eye stuff.

This was a beautiful look at a difficult subject most people prefer to avoid. Whether the original was more poetic in style, this was still wonderfully written. Highly recommended!

***Many thanks to Netgalley and Coach House Books for providing an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. ( )

A special thank you to NetGalley and Coach House Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

In the end, we all die, no one is exempt from death.

This fleeting narrative is a collection of vignettes about the dead. A father—the embalmer—relays the cases to his daughter. These are the notes of a life spent dealing with death and the aftermath, and a daughter trying to make sense of it all, including trying to make sense of her father. He speaks of children, of the elderly, of young women, of those marred in death, and of the secrets of his profession, like the powder that is injected into the cheeks for blush, how candle wax is used to reconstruct a skull, and weighing down an empty casket with the right amount of stones.

The retelling of these cases in note format works perfectly—it is as if the reader is the notetaker. His daughter is trying just as hard as the reader to make sense of her father's life which was spent staring at death. In a cruel irony, we learn that cases of brain tumours are more common among anatomists, pathologists and embalmers (they think it's the formaldehyde).

Fascinating, sad, gruesome, and isolating. This haunting book will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned. ( )